“Your photos haven’t arrived yet for the art show…”

Nothing will make a photographer’s heart seize up than hearing that their artworks – which are scheduled to appear in a gallery art show – have not yet arrived at the gallery.

It’s one of those nightmare scenarios – the same kind where you dream that you’re late for a test, and you arrive at class and there’s only three minutes to get the test done… Yes, I remember that scene in Risky Business, but I don’t anticipate the follow-up, in which a teenaged Rebecca DeMornay shows up at my house saying, “Are you ready for me … Ralph?”

But back to my plight. Normally, I would have brought the images to the gallery myself – and would have done so in this instance, had the gallery show not been in London, England. I don’t care how roadworthy my Saturn Ion is, I don’t think it can handle oceanic voyages.

So on the 18th of December, I printed out and mailed my two Kodachrome images – “The Railsplitter” and “Toll Gate Ice Cream” – which you see here -

THE RAILSPLITTER

TOLL GATE ICE CREAM

Both photos were printed, trimmed, and shipped off to London for the AOP Gallery show, “A Celebration of Kodachrome.” That was on the 18th of December.

I didn’t hear back from the AOP Gallery, so on January 11th – one week before the gallery show opened – I contacted Marina at the AOP Gallery via e-mail, and asked if my photos looked good in their AOP frames. The plan was to send the prints, and have the AOP Gallery install the artwork in their custom displays.

Marina responded back via e-mail. “Chuck, I was going to email you today. No, the prints haven’t arrived yet.”

Yikes.

Oh this is not good.

The gallery show opens in one week, and there would be 67 artworks displayed in the “A Celebration of Kodachrome” – and two empty spaces where The Railsplitter and Toll Gate Ice Cream were supposed to hang.

I thought about my emergency options, and there were very few left available. I could either:

(A) print out both images again, trim them to 50cm x 60cm, and try to global express overnight the prints to England… which would cost me a fortune;

(B) contract with a British printer, and send them digital copies of the prints so they could print them out and deliver them to the AOP Gallery … again, this would cost me.

(C) beg the AOP Gallery for mercy and ask if the Gallery would at least send me back my entrance fees if the prints didn’t arrive.

I could have gone with any of those options.

Instead, Option (D) came into play.

It was another e-mail from Marina, 30 minutes after her first e-mail to me.

“You wont believe that… They just arrived!”

Thank God for Option (D).

I think I’m going to make that into a T-shirt slogan. “Thank God for Option (D).”

Marina e-mailed me again, mentioning that the pictures – which I had trimmed to 50cm x 60cm from their original 20″ x 24″ dimensions – were just a little too snug in the frame, and asked if she could trim a centimeter off of one of the sides so that it would fit in the frames properly. I gave my permission to do so.

She said she would send images of the framed photos at the Gallery show, and as soon as she sends them, I’ll post them here.